PoV: Listrian (The “Doctor”)

The moment Melissa told Listrian that the situation might be urgent they dropped the coals they had just been holding on the metal holder. Stopping the aromatic herbs from burning no longer relevant. The leaves and sprigs had little worth besides the time they took to grow and that was not one of his concerns.

Listrian moved the clay ground below their feet to propel themselves with haste. In their own home, they cultivated the materials, causing interactions to be cheaper. Tens of thousands of their own mana still suffusing the ground making such a feat almost free of cost, and vastly overshadowing speed accomplished through mundane speeds such as walking or running. Especially since he too wasn’t immune to slipping on the moist volcanic rock.

The patient was easily discernable even through the steam. Listrian’s connection to the steam all around them allowed for limited perception of surfaces the steam interacted with and the blood stood out. A boy a few years younger than themselves, carried by a larger person with Melissa already further inside. The most obvious thing was the remaining wild mana aspects pressing against Listrian’s own energy. The type of mana was hard to discern at a distance initially until he noticed his connection to the steam breaking down in proximity to the boy's stomach.

Continuously.

Decay, Decomposition… No both are unlikely. Cracking? No. Observed mana type is too violent. Shattering? Potentially. Good that means no further damage will happen for now. Initial contact is primary origin of harm but degenerates under the influence of other mana types. Injury must be fresh or more likely the patient hasn’t been able to completely refill their energy pools since then.

Listrian saw them with his own eyes one second after noticing their presence.

“Quickly, carry them to the bench,” Listrian instructed Melissa and the two unknowns.

Listrian came to a stop next to the door, closing it perhaps a bit faster than necessary. Wasting their steam was annoying; people didn’t understand, preferring the refreshing outdoors over the pleasant heat, the benefits it brought everyone.

Listrian winced after seeing the reaction to the slamming door. As the others carried the boy they kept observing. Now with their own eyes and proximity, they were able to determine a few things. There weren’t any external injuries. Whatever had happened to the boy seemed to be only internal. Which made no sense. Shattering attacks affected everything. Skin and blood vessels just as much as organs or bones – and going by the pained look on the patient's face the latter was certainly the case.

“How are there no external injuries? Did you take a potion?” were the only ideas that came to Listrian’s mind. It would have been a terrible decision to do so. Potions were great against injuries that didn’t exceed skin, blood vessels, and muscle fiber regrowth. Other things such as a well-set bone or even a pierced organ were not too terrible to heal. Everything exceeding that would have dire consequences.

Listrian made those observations quickly, and one that stood out was a complete lack of human blood on the patient.

“Why is there no human blood on you?” Listrian asked squinting. “Are you human?”

It was a valid question they thought.

Listrian hadn’t met a shifter, one of the few types of races that weren’t strictly human anymore, yet. Should they even exist in the first place? The institute was surprisingly tight-lipped on the topic. The race was one of the most interesting sub-races, presumed to be living out there. If they didn’t descend from humans then Listrian would die to observe their dungeon-formed intelligence. Should they be human-like, insights into their creation might very well add to Listrian’s own insights into changing bodies.

They weren’t really worried about this person being a threat though. Melissa had a good eye for people and even if she didn’t, there were few chances that someone of roughly their own level could be a threat in his house. Even if the lack of external injuries spoke of a trait that hardened the skin or increased the effects of toughness on the skin, they wouldn’t be able to do much against being suffocated in stone or boiled alive.

The young adult twitched as he was put down on a slab of warm volcanic rock. Listrian was a bit annoyed at that, the two people carrying the patient should have been able to prevent that.

Listrian didn’t waste any time as they began infusing the steam with higher concentrations of Relaxing Steam around the patient. Their first-ever skill amplified both Health and Stamina regeneration. More importantly, the skills connection with the steam around themself gave Listrian better control of their trait, allowing him to choose who to affect.

At first slowly, then with increasing intensity, they began applying their trait, Sedating Geyser, onto the patient. Kent was his name, the older conqueror told Listrian. The application happened quickly, and within a few breaths, Kent had lost consciousness entirely. There were no more preparations to undertake before starting. There wasn’t even a rush, the patient seemed to be stable for the most part.

Listrian began slowly infusing the patient with their own health, allowing their trait to solidify its grasp. With it, ousting the healing-preventing ‘Shattering’-mana was easy.

Just as they were relaxedly approaching the actual physical treatment the patient began to stir once. Listrian pushed more health through their trait and just as quickly Kent calmed down again.

Listrian had encountered a lot of things in his life. Someone of a lower level so effectively countering their sedation was not one of them. They had a patient once with Vitality and Magic through the first hallmark at a value of 500 and they had put up less passive resistance.

The main ability of their trait was far more powerful than it had any right to be. By all means, they should have either gotten either the water or earth alignment of their parents or developed a new trait with barely any oomph behind it. Yet their status and abilities spoke for something else.

Their parents had synergized well.

Listrian Turgot

Pools:

Health: 1572/1694

Stamina: 41/64

Mana: 649/814

Stats:

Vitality: 412

Toughness: 46

Endurance: 11

Strength: 12

Agility: 10

Senses: 117

Mind: 82

Magic: 407

Willpower: 117

Regeneration: 14

Trait: 197

Trait:

Sedating Geyser

Allowing not only for the coupling of one attribute to their trait but two. Both Magic and Vitality grew by two points with each point they advanced their trait by. Though in terms of effect his Vitality was the sure winner. They would already easily eclipse the lifespan of the average person.

Skills:

Vulcanic Geology (Trait) – Core Tree:

Foundational:

Heat Rock (20/20) –

Rock you infuse with mana can rapidly heat up. Works especially well on Vulcanic Rock. Efficiency and area affected grows with rank and magic.

Sculpt Vulcanic Rock (20/20) –

Form Vulcanic Rock into a desired shape. The speed and sturdiness of construction grows with rank and magic. Hotter Rock is drastically easier to form.

Soothing Steam (Trait) – Core Tree:

Foundational:

Steam Conjuring (20/20) –

Conjure Steam and direct its movements through your trait or spend mana to increase its speed and the amount of control.

Relaxing Steam (20/20) –

Increase the Recovery Rate of Health and Stamina while in steam you have manifested of diffused with your mana.

Core:

Pressurize Steam (13/20) –

You can freely change the pressure, heat, and velocity of Steam. All factors grow as well as efficiency grow with rank and magic.

Depths of the Geyser (Trait) – Core Tree:

Foundational:

Capacity Compression (20/20) –

Temporarily reduce your energy pools’ capacity to accelerate the corresponding regeneration by the inverse rate of capacity reduction.

Max Capacity Reduction: 48%

Max Regeneration Increase: ~300%

Eruption (20/20) –

Violently use your mana at an increased cost. Mana skills become stronger when the cost is boosted past a skills normal max.

Max Cost Increase: 100%

Max Strength Increase: 120%

Core:

Bond Substitution (16/20) –

You are able affect other composite materials that are similar in makeup to your aligned element.

Trait: You can affect other sentients that are similar in makeup to your own physiology more directly when using volcanic and steam skills in conjunction.

Cost: 210%

Effectiveness: 80%

Listrian felt each of their active skills permeate through the patient’s body. Resistance to their skills was negligible as it was with most people. But their trait seemingly struggled. The ability Listrian had gained when they reached fifty stats in their trait, being able to imbue Sedating Geysir with health or mana, was saving them insane amounts of the slowly regenerating mana. Even then their health expenditure was growing a little unsettling. But they didn’t want the patient to feel his organs being rearranged and stitched together, having gone through that themselves several times. Nor would witnessing the removal of excrement from his ruptured intestines or hearing the soft crunching as he restructured the hip be of any gain here.

Halfway through fixing the complex pattering of the patient’s intestines, Listrian chose health to further sedate the patient again. It was growing slightly uncomfortable, having spent a total of 300 health on just sedating now but they pushed the thought to the side. There weren’t any side effects besides the uncomfortable itching. They had made confirmed that on several occasions. Health was preferred as the corresponding regeneration was greater than for mana.

Early in the treatment, Listrian asked the other two to leave the room, their chatter slightly distracting them. They felt like the two wouldn’t have particularly enjoyed the opening of the patient’s stomach to extract some of the waste matter that had spilled into the stomach area anyway.

I wish I wouldn’t have to be here too; he held his nose closed with one hand. The smell was less than pleasant this close to the patient. Wouldn’t smell be important for identifying some illnesses Listrian would have long since gotten rid of the sense.

Most of the operation went by smoothly after a little accident with the fecal matter. An indication of the patient’s low toughness and vitality. Making Listrian guess again how such an accident had been possible. But even that wasn’t secondary as the resistance to his trait was mindboggling. Listrian was usually able to easily work on people twice his level without extending additional resources – as long as they inhaled steam.

He had spent almost half his health by now.

That did leave him to identify the person though.

Human(?) – Lower Level – First Evolution

The results were interesting. That the boy had an affinity potent enough to indicate a slight variation to the base human model was fascinating. Even more so since he was a lower level than Listrian. It motivated them to inspect the energy suffusing the patient’s body more closely. With a touch, Listrian got a rough impression of the energies suffusing the body.

They were non-sensical though. The further he looked the harder it became to grasp anything. Almost impossible, but not quite. Besides the shattering mana that both Listrian and the host body were fighting there were at least two affinities muddled in there.

That’s not entirely correct, is it? He noticed that it felt something alike his own mana had felt back when he hadn’t solidified his trait yet. It isn’t becoming something new though. It’s almost like it stopped fusing half-way through the process. Nature and Metal? Maybe life instead of nature? There was something else there though. Something that was seemingly at odds with the rest, just barely present, almost suppressed or maybe of a suppressing nature itself.

He grinned as he realized that his thoughts were drifting away from the patient’s treatment. That wasn’t unusual, and not an issue. He could perform bone stitching without issues after three years of practice.

But they should pay attention. Listrian did for a few moments, but as it came to stitching the skin back together their thoughts wandered again. Bringing them back to one of the two moments when his entire life changed.

Listrian had figured that they were in for a life of mediocracy at best. Their trait appearing two years before turning eighteen wasn’t an encouraging sign when one hoped for greatness and the first two skill trees unlocked seemed powerful but had a lot of pre-requirements, blocking them from accessing the more powerful seeming skills directly.

The first signs that something odd was going on were the cross-coupling of the trait stat with vitality and magic. And got even more interesting when they received a class option that offered a lot more stat points compared to the others that had appeared. Natural Shaper felt like a class that would help with shaping the world, and the high amounts of stats they gained from it affirmed it.

But it hadn’t. Thus far it seemed to be primarily focused on humans. Something they weren’t opposed to either, given the fascination way bodies worked.

This was further validated when they reached fifty in their trait and unlocked the third skill tree. Not only that – an occurrence that was basically unheard of happening before reaching the one-hundred or two-hundred trait value – was eye-raising. That the newly unlocked tree had become available at the core rank was something he had expected to be impossible. Something that as far as they knew shouldn’t be possible.

So, they hadn’t ever told anyone about that or that they had been able to choose a core skill directly – though that had come with some requirements they had only learned of when he reached level thirty.

In all honesty, Listrian still didn’t know what to think of it, even now, three years later.

But it had given them a chance to turn around his life. To move from aspiring to be a conqueror or potentially a surveyor to a nobler profession.

Healing had never really called to them, until the point they had tried it first. Initially, they had picked up the skill facilitating all that, Bond Substitution, out of curiosity. Now it was so much more, almost an addiction.

Listrian enjoyed the feeling of having complete control over someone else’s body – which upon objective inspection was a bit worrying. Good thing Listrian only rarely partook in introspection. The far better part of the deal was seeing people come to him haggard and broken, to then leave in almost perfect condition a short time later. Some injuries, like tendon tears or nervous tissue, were still out of reach for them but it would soon come, they were sure.

Listrian’s thoughts were interrupted when he realized that his work had been completed. When bone was no longer shattered and there was no more mana drain from his skills.

The boy’s injuries had been fairly easy to work with after the shattering mana had been dissolved. If you ignored the leakage of his guts. That had been an issue – especially since scar tissue still escaped Listrian – but all in all the actual treatment hadn’t been an issue.

Once done Listrian activated Capacity Compression and centered themselves. Now he would have to talk to the other two, a much more arduous task. He considered waking the patient, but it wasn’t worth the resources, and they could use the little bonus that regeneration offered.

At a last thought, they took the metal equipment of the patient, with the intent of storing it out of the reach of the metal corroding steam. Rusty tools were a hassle.